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>so that's what I've "learned" from just the first post. But... is it correct?

watashi can be used by either sex, it's more polite/distant than boku as well. I use watashi at class and boku with friends, but I'm still learning, so whatever. ^^

Technically desu is a contracted (from de arimasu) copula (in present, polite form) which basically means two things are equal. Google it if you really care, but you can just translate it as "is". It's not a verb per se, but verbs come at the end of a sentence in Japanese which is why your guess for wa is wrong. Like said above, in anime you'll hear da a lot more often which is the regular, not as polite/distant, form.

ka is the question particple, wa is the topic marker. So anata wa in isolation is probably better translated as "as for you..." or "concerning you..." since it isn't necessarily the subject, but can be. Uh, I don't want to explain the whole topic/subject marker bit. Try this page ^^:
http://japaneseculture.about.com/library/weekly/aa051301a.htm

yeah watashi = i and is conisdered to be female
boku wa = i and is considered to be more male, yeah i think that it is for kids and ore is the male one for guys ^_^

Actually watashi is neutral
Atashi/watakushi is feminine
boku and ore are both masculine forms. I think the reason Chise was laughing might be because ore is more 'macho-ish' and/or egotistical and you probably would end up using ore in everyday informal speech. An extreme case of this (and probably in jest) is that in Revery Earth (the manga), one of the male characters refers to himself as 'ore-sama' since -sama denotes prestige and is usually used when you are talking/referring to someone of much higher stature than yourself. (Fans will do this sometimes of their favorite creators) It has about the equivalent level of 'lord'.

I dont want to seem like im taking over Gravy's thread here, but for those of you who want me to teach virtually straight out of my old Japanese I textbook, chapter by chapter, you can follow my posts here, and get reinforcement from Gravy's and who ever else posts lessons here.

GO PRACTICE NOW!!!!11!!!, I will give you one week to study, just get most of them down pat, reading vocab words and sentences will reninforce you when we start the lessons.

Make sure you read out loud AND write each one.

Dont worry about kanji now, we will start kanji later.

Like i said before, ill be posting only in hiragana and katakana from now on, and only list romanji for hard pronounciations.

I dont know about Gravy and the other guys, but i think it would be benifical to you to speak and learn how to read japanese.

I will try to post my new lessons every week.
I will try to break each lesson into parts that you need to work on each day.

I just read Gravies post below, And im just wondering, how many people will actually take the effort in learning japanese from me? cuz I dont want to be wasting my time if you guys dont really want to put forth the effort.

I'll learn! (or try, at least!) I love languages, and having weekly lessons seems like a nice way to keep on track.

I came across the following site for hiragana and katakana (yet another one) - you don't need to login to get to the worksheets, and they won't help you memorize the kana, but I found it helpful to trace the shapes like this for your initial writing practice.

The first link you mentioned, p3psi, also has links to dakuon, handakuon, and youon? What are those? Should I memorize them as well?

yes yes yes, they are part of the alphabet, but not really extra memorization, its just that the pronouciation changes
For example,は-is "ha"
ば-is "ba"
ぱ-is "pa"
か-is "ka"
が-is "ga"

also, this little "yo" after "ki" is suppose to be on the same level with "ki". not a subscript, but it is suppose to be smaller than "ki"
きょis "kyo"
this seems its going to be a problem for me writing in japanese in posts, if anyone knows how to fix that yo from floating in the middle, let me know.
you also use the same rules with its katakana counterpart

ive been looking through that link you posted, and thats a good idea to write these out. because you want to practice reading and writeing them of course.

yeah watashi = i and is conisdered to be female
boku wa = i and is considered to be more male, yeah i think that it is for kids and ore is the male one for guys ^_^

At the bottom of this page on 100 Most Essential Words in Anime, there is a section about pronouns (words like "I", "you", etc.), which I thought was pretty good. It touches on the difficulties surrounding pronouns in Japanese, mainly about the formalities involved.

Hello everyone, I'm new here but I noticed this thread and thought I'd throw in a contribution. For people looking for a good way to learn on their own, I'd have to recomend a piece of software called "human Japanese." I got my copy bundled in with a 4 cd set called "Instant Immersion Japanese" that I picked up at Best Buy for about $20. The first 2 cd's of the set were pretty useless, but the third one is gold. After the basics, it focuses on sentence structure, building more and more complex sentences by moving thru the vaious 'particles' that comprise and identify the pieces of Japanese speech. Also, it instructs hiragana and katakana (no kanji, unfortunately). Also, all Japanese text can be clicked to hear what it's supposed to sound like (between that, and watching too much anime, my pronounciation is getting pretty good ) This may just be the way that I learn, but I'm doing better with this software than any other method I've tried. Also, for people looking for an incredible little Japanese word processor, I'd recommend JWPce. It's open-source, and thus freeware I got my copy from

The lessons there are awesome. Every lesson is made of a piece of text that is shown in both Japanese and English next to each other so you can easily compare them to each other. After the text there is the grammar part, which goes trough the grammar used in the text. Finally all lessons have a few drills where you have to type in a word to a sentence or something similar. You can also listen to the text in Japanese so you know the pronounciation. At some point the lessons switch to hiragana and katakana which makes things a bit slower though.

I think its stupid when people who dont know japanese integrated with english.

such as adding "ne?" at the end of sentences or other words that do not fit into the grammar. Mixing of languages is fmurdering of the beauty of a language. The only reason foreign words should be used are for names and places. "Otakus" adding 1 or 2 japanese words they learned from anime is just stupid and worse when used incorrectly.